and his removing of bodily disorders was emblematical of the spiritual diseases, which he also came to heal. But the evangelist must not be understood to say, that the prophecy related to nothing more than the sympathizing with the afflicted, and the healing of their disorders ; for St. Peter, quoting the very same passage, declares that Jesus " bare, not our sorrows merely, but our sins, in his own body on the tree, and healed them by his stripes1." Hence, then, we perceive that as sin had introduced all manner of temporal, spiritual, and eternal miseries into the world, it was for the removal of them that Jesus submitted to all the sufferings which were inflicted on him.
But more particularly the prophet informs us that Jesus suffered,
1 . For the expiating of our guilt —
It is certainly true, that, wherever suffering is en- dured by an intelligent creature, there guilt must have previously been either contracted, or imputed. The brute animals would never have felt pain, if they had not been subjected to it on account of man's trans- gression"1. Now our Lord himself "knew no sin;" and yet endured infinitely more from God, from men, and from devils, than ever had been inflicted on any human being. But he had undertaken to redeem us from the curse of the broken law. He had engaged to pay the debt, which a whole world of sinners had contracted ; and so to discharge it, that not one far- thing should ever be exacted of those who should trust in him. Here then was the true cause of all his sufferings. Is it asked, What it was that occasioned him such diversified and unutterable torments ? We answer, Men and devils were the executioners; but our sins were the meritorious cause : " He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities" There is not a sin which we have ever committed, that was not "as a sword in his bones ;" and it was only by his bearing of our sins in his own body on the tree, that the guilt of them, and the curse due to
1 1 Pet. ii. 24. m Rom. viii. 20.